[MLA] Loudness War in New York Times
Bob Katz
bobkatz at digido.com
Sun Feb 10 16:15:12 CET 2019
I lost a spec mix several years ago. The competition was a mix engineer
who works at a well-known mastering house in Colorado. I was very
disappointed in the quality of his mix which I got to hear. It was
louder but squished in a bad way. It had been mixed the cheater's way,
by pushing a bus compressor to the hilt. It was acoustic folk music! The
artist loved it for some reason. Basically I cannot work that way, so I
just took it in stride and never looked back.
We are often using a bus compressor these days in the mix room, but as a
method of gluing. And sometimes to help give rock mixes a bit of
attitude. But the gluer is not a substitute for good ol' fashioned fader
moving.... It takes longer to do it my way, but the sonic rewards are
very high.
Many years ago I was hired to mix a song in a studio on Long Island
mixing with what I'm positive is an obviously deaf arranger. He kept
asking me to push each instrument of a string quartet up and up and up
so he could hear every single note. It was instantly the "everything
louder than everything else" game time. No subtlety. A very frustrating
day. I did what he asked but maybe I should have just pushed everything
into a compressor. For a string quartet! Are people going deaf?
I've been known to use parallel compression on string sections to help
get "that sound", especially in a rock or pop mix, to fit the strings
into a dense mix, or to get that "Beatles" sound. But I still mix with
taste, as always after decades in this business.
Bob
On 2/10/19 9:38 AM, Bob Katz wrote:
>
> Doing mixes on spec is the worst kind of slave labor. You can spend a
> day or more on a good sounding single mix, especially if you don't
> lean on bus processing to mix it for you. :-)
>
> I think that all the mixers should band together to stop this "spec
> mix competition" nonsense. It can't lead anywhere good. The A&R are
> loving it... they don't have to pay to get the workers to do their
> work for them. And the loudest mix wins? Shit.... I feel nauseous.
>
>
> Bob K.
>
>
> On 2/9/19 1:30 PM, Robin Reumers wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I know I totally have no right to comment on this within the group,
>> but I would love to share my personal experience with this. Last
>> year, I got to do a spec mix for a well known Spanish artist. It got
>> 5 Latin Grammy nominations and 1 Grammy nomination. 3 mixers were
>> asked to mix 2 of the singles on the album and then the artist / A&R
>> / producer picked a winner. I ended up not making it, but then I
>> heard the mix that won and I really wanted to understand what they
>> could have liked better about it.
>>
>> One thing is that his mix that he sent to the client was about 6dBs
>> louder (mine was around -13 LUFS). Mine already had some bus
>> processing on it, to make it compete, but I didn’t want to deliver
>> something at say -7 LUFS. Then I heard that the way these mixes were
>> being listened to was a simple MP3 of each, sent via email. So the
>> way the artist / A&R compares these spec mixes, is typically not
>> loudness normalised. Which means as a mixer, if you want to be safe
>> that your mix gets chosen, it makes “sense" to make it louder.
>>
>> I know for example with the last John Mayer album, it was also spec
>> mixed by multiple mixing engineers. So is it possible that those
>> highly paid mixers chose to make it really loud, because it’s the
>> safest bet? Spec mixes seem to be very common nowadays.
>>
>> Just wanted to share my 2 cents.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Robin
>>
>>> On 9 Feb 2019, at 09:39, Robert Ludwig <gatewaybob at mac.com
>>> <mailto:gatewaybob at mac.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Kevin,
>>> While there are exceptions, like the new Mark Knopfler album, some
>>> albums I work on are mixed louder than I have ever encountered, and
>>> louder than I would have ever considered to be a good final result.
>>>
>>> So it isn’t the mastering engineers always at fault, it is many of
>>> the very _highest paid_ mixers like Manny Marroquin, Shawn Everett,
>>> Tom Elmhurst etc. who think their work should be amazingly loud.
>>>
>>> They do their own pre-mastering to their flat mixes and send those
>>> highly compressed mixes to the client for their listening
>>> references. Their clients don’t even get to HEAR the raw mixes
>>> which are typically 5-10 dB less compressed than the listening
>>> references.
>>>
>>> If you are used to looking at VU meters: Our mastering rooms are
>>> calibrated so 1kHz @ -14dBFS = 0 VU on our consoles. I remember
>>> when DATs were first being used in 1987 and mixes to DAT used to
>>> peak around +2 to +4 VU. Today I _routinely_ get in listening mixes
>>> from the mix engineers that peak at +10 or even +12VU! I mean +14VU
>>> is _all that is possible_! Distorted? Yes indeed!! I guess it is
>>> part of the ethos of it now.
>>>
>>> The A&R people, the artists and certainly the mixers expect me to at
>>> LEAST match their listening reference level, a level I would
>>> normally never dream of going that high..
>>>
>>> I try to do what I can. I tell clients about Spotify loudness
>>> normalization and how they can get a feel for that by comparing flat
>>> mixes vs. compressed mixes with Sound Check turned on in iTunes.
>>> When we start a project there is often a key song that they want
>>> mastered before the album comes out and I will send them both
>>> dynamic and hot versions and 90% of the time they pick the hot one.
>>>
>>> For me, 2 of my “Best Engineered” Grammy Awards are for records that
>>> are mixed and thus mastered _way too hot:_ the Beck “Morning Phase”
>>> and the Alabama Shakes album that is just _crazy_ loud. Those
>>> nominations are chosen by _craft committees_ the Recording
>>> Academy puts together of the best mixers and well regarded mastering
>>> engineers. I don’t understand it!
>>>
>>> Years ago when the mixers started doing this I would only be
>>> supplied with their low level original mixes (the ones the A&R
>>> people and the artist have _never_ heard!). I would master the
>>> album to sound as good as possible and everyone would report back
>>> how small and wimpy it sounded… and how could someone like me even
>>> _submit_ something so bad? We discovered this insane absurdity of
>>> them not supplying the mastering engineer with the very mixes
>>> everyone but us were listening to and USED TO! Once I heard what
>>> they were hearing everything was fine. So in short order our front
>>> office now asks specifically to be supplied with the non-smashed
>>> mixes as well as the files everyone else has been hearing. It has
>>> been one of the most unexpected and disappointing situations.
>>>
>>> All my best,
>>> Bob Ludwig
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:25 AM, Kevin Gross <kevin.gross at avanw.com
>>>> <mailto:kevin.gross at avanw.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I was surprised to learn from Bob Ludwig's quotes that loudness
>>>> normalization has not been successful at stemming the loudness war.
>>>> Are others here in agreement with this assessment?
>>>>
>>>> Kevin Gross - AVA Networks
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> MLA mailing list
>>> MLA at grimmaudio.nl <mailto:MLA at grimmaudio.nl>
>>> http://grimmaudio.nl/mailman/listinfo/mla_grimmaudio.nl
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> MLA mailing list
>> MLA at grimmaudio.nl
>> http://grimmaudio.nl/mailman/listinfo/mla_grimmaudio.nl
> --
> If you want good sound on your album, come to Bob Katz 407-831-0233
> DIGITAL DOMAIN MASTERING STUDIO Author: *Mastering Audio* Digital
> Domain Website <https://www.digido.com/> No trees were killed in the
> sending of this message. However a large number of electrons were
> terribly inconvenienced.
>
> _______________________________________________
> MLA mailing list
> MLA at grimmaudio.nl
> http://grimmaudio.nl/mailman/listinfo/mla_grimmaudio.nl
--
If you want good sound on your album, come to Bob Katz 407-831-0233
DIGITAL DOMAIN MASTERING STUDIO Author: *Mastering Audio* Digital Domain
Website <https://www.digido.com/> No trees were killed in the sending of
this message. However a large number of electrons were terribly
inconvenienced.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grimmaudio.nl/pipermail/mla_grimmaudio.nl/attachments/20190210/bef66c98/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the MLA
mailing list